Can Ultraviolet Light Fight the Spread of Influenza?

We've had this discussion before, the UV-c devices produce very little ozone...I have one in just about every room, they work great...

It's interesting that it permanently damages the DNA of the bacteria?... isn't that in part how evolution works.

I believe evolution takes place in a living organism...in this case the DNA is damaged beyond repair, leading to death, or elimination through inability to reproduce...Certainly evolution relies on genetic mutation, but these I think would be minute changes over generations...If the mutation cannot be passed to the next generation, then no evolution can take place...

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/mutations_01

But the bacterium that is on the edge of the UV penetration, that survive. When I was using Xenon flash UV, I recall that on Xenon's web site at the time that it kills a high percentage of bacterium. so there were a few that gets past.

Well there are several sources of radiation that occur naturally and also man made, so this is not new ground...In other words the mutations will take place with or without uvc from these lights, the only difference is that many of these exposures in this case will lead to death....

Now I'm not saying that there may not be some unintended consequences associated with uvc usage on a wide scale....but the severity of these possible effects remains to be seen...

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q9450.html

Yes, according to many famous reports, news and universities, uvc light can inativate influenza even coronavirus.

Evolution in bacteria is actually pretty fast, because of their short life cycle.

We should remember that some bacteria are known to have survived in space... Life may have even been seeded on this planet by bacteria on meteorites. So it would be wrong to assume that a mutation isn't possible that would make bacteria immune or resistant to the effects of UV-C, gamma etc.

We may just be getting them ready to survive the reversal of the poles, or some other major catastrophe. Or is the gradual thinning of the ozone layer doing that anyway?

Maybe UV-C would be better used for eg surgical tools, rather than a wholesale application to airborne microbial eco's. When it comes to resistance, we're batting zero against the microbial kingdom.

Interesting claim that far-UVC is less penetrative than broad spectrum, as usually the shorter the wavelength the more penetrative - visible → UV → X-rays → gamma-rays. I suppose they must know

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Subtypes

Thanks, interesting article.

Apparently, the shorter wavelengths don't penetrate as far and the energy is absorbed in dead surface skin cells (stratum corneum).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_corneum

"Penetration of human skin by ultraviolet light

John L. Bezzant, M.D.
The longer the wavelength of light, the deeper the penetration of the light into the skin. Ultraviolet light is generally divided into ultraviolet C (200 to 280 nanometers), ultraviolet B (280 to 320 nanometers), and ultraviolet A (320 to 400 nanometers). Of the light that reaches the surface, ultraviolet B (mid-wavelength ultraviolet light) appears to be the most carcinogenic."

https://library.med.utah.edu/kw/derm/pages/meet_2.htm

OK thanks, it seems there are areas where the general trend of increasing penetration with decreasing wavelength is reversed.

About 15 years ago, I had worked with (Used) Xenon where they make a high intensity pulse. I implemented it for treating brining systems in dairy plants. I don't have information off hand, but the pulse system is pretty intense. to try to penetrate farther.

A little information, one of the plant managers there says he doesn't care for it, I asked him why and his reply was 'it may kill the bug,... but the dead caress remains in the brine"

Nice to know there's an up side to being covered in dead skin. Unlike rodents which are simply hairy, .. "..some experiments with mice have demonstrated a causative link between squamous cell cancer and UVC irradiation"

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q9450.html

"With increasing germicidal uses of man-made UVC radiation, perhaps especially in hospital settings where there is a strong concern about the spread of harmful bacteria, it is likely that more human exposures will occur, and future studies may show some links with disease that we have not so far identified. As has been recognized for some time, UVC radiation can damage the superficial tissues of the eye, and care must be taken to avoid excessive exposures of the eye."

I like the UV robots, going around and doing the cleanup for us. I like the contained systems like the fan that sucks in air to be safely decontaminated without exposing me or my.. dead skin.

Well I do believe these uvc and other sanitation methods are conducted on only empty rooms, so no exposure to humans...

Then, there's this.

"At a price of less than $1,000 per lamp -- a cost that would surely decrease if the lamps were mass produced -- far-UVC lights are relatively inexpensive."

We can't even repair our crumbling infrastructure and somebody wants to spend TRILLION$ on light bulbs that don't illuminate?

"Flu kills up to 4,000 Americans a week, causing 1 in 10 deaths"

..."The levels of influenza-like illnesses being reported now are as high as the peak of the swine flu epidemic in 2009, and exceed the last severe seasonal flu outbreak in 2003 when a new strain started circulating, said Anne Schuchat, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s acting director. Swine flu, which swept the globe in 2009 and 2010, sickened 60.8 million Americans, hospitalized 274,304 and killed 12,469, according to CDC data. Deaths from the current outbreak will likely far outstrip those of the 2009-2010 season."...

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/flu-deaths-america-how-to-prevent-cold-epidemic-12570347.php

I'm not disagreeing that this years' flu is deadly.

What I am suggesting is that there is no money for new lights.

A kickstarter campaign in each community to place these lights locally would raise the money quickly.....Schools, daycare facilities, supermarkets, hospitals, government buildings...The longest journey begins with a single step, as they say....Waiting for the government to take action is not always the best option...

The reason there is crumbling infrastructure is because all of the money supposedly allocated for it from increased gas taxes for example, is actually spent on some other pork barrel project that has nothing to do with infrastructure.

Take California for example, the state legislature voted in a new gas tax ( without voter approval ) to replace the last gas tax that never was spent on infrastructure like it was supposed to, but rather has been spent on things like food, lodging and birth expenses for undocumented pregnant immigrant women. Food, lodging and transportation, medical services for prison released career criminals.

Etc.

That sounds about right!

And this ‘somebody’ we know who you are referring too. Tries to be proactive... and these pinheads throws a fit and cry’s about it... as your displaying,... and low and behold... a pandemic hits... tell me the costs now...

and these same pinheads... (like yourself), cry and complain, because this ‘somebody’ you referred to,... hasn’t done anything and doesn’t have a vaccine waiting on your door step...

do you see the hypocrisy you’ve been displaying the past 4-5 years with your hypocrisy,... shall we go to the film?... so to speak

But dispite this being said,.. I still hope you’re in good health.

One dose and done.

• An experimental flu drug developed in Japan is said to kill the virus in 24 hours
• The Shionogi & Co. compound works three times faster than Tamiflu, the most popular flu medicine doctors and nurses use to treat patients sick with the virus
• The new compound is a pill and only requires a single dose to rid patients of flu symptoms, while the drug Tamiflu has to be taken twice a day, for five days
• The World Health Organization said it could change the way doctors treat the flu
• The compound, however, won't be available in the United States until next year

Read the results of the clinical trial...

https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/influenza/news/online/%7Bd465e1e1-3e50-4cc6-9ba6-f749c1f308e5%7D/capstone-1-new-antiviral-superior-to-placebo-at-reducing-influenza-symptoms

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...

An experimental flu drug developed in Japan is said to kill the virus in 24 hours .

Likely to be sold throughout the world for $0.11* per dose.

The compound, however, won't be available in the United States until next year.

In the US $2,500* per dose!

*made up numbers to make a point

Sadly, now there is nothing to stop the Martin Shkreli's and Heather Bresch's from raping the ill people here in the USA.

Shkreli needs no introduction.

Bresch is the daughter of former West Virginia Governor and current Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. Bresch has been central to two controversies; a 2007 accusation of inflating her resume with an unearned MBA degree, and as the CEO of Mylan during the controversy over pricing of the company's EpiPen products.

We can expect no help from former Eli-Lily drug executive Alex Azar if this drug is ever approved for use here.

$2,500.00 sounds about right.

@ JE Chacago: This is all in response to your #9.

Perhaps this could be independently trialled in hospitals and monitored. If it has potential that can be verified then a cost benefit analyses could be used to make a case for more wide spread use as a way to both make people healthier while at the same time reallocating and potentially reducing existing tax payer medical spending costs.

Win-win.

5 latest findings on UV light disinfection in hospitals

June 12, 2015

Earlier this year, the ECRI Institute placed disinfection robots at the top of its 2015 Top 10 Hospital C-Suite Watch List, which highlights new and emerging technologies. Ultraviolet light robots fall under that category. The following are five studies on the efficacy of UV light disinfection that have been covered by Becker's Hospital Review since the beginning of 2015.

1. In just 10 minutes, a pulsed xenon UV robot can kill Clostridium difficile, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus on hospital room surfaces, a study in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology found.

2. Utica, N.Y.-based Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare was able to reduce rates of Clostridium difficile infections by 39 percent after implementing a bundle of evidence-based interventions and using the Sufacide Helios Triple Emitter UV-C disinfection system.

3. UV light disinfection can be used on personal protective equipment, while the healthcare worker is still wearing it, to reduce the risk of possible contamination while taking off the PPE, according to a studypublished in the American Journal of Infection Control.

4. Continuous UV-C disinfection robots were proven to be more effective in killing pathogens than pulsed xenon devices in a study funded by the U.S. Veterans Administration.

5. Germ-zapping robots using pulsed xenon ultraviolet light can clean hospital rooms about as well as manual cleaning, according to research from the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Round Rock. Last year in a different study, the same researcher also found that manual cleaning plus UV light killed 99 percent of MRSA bacteria.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/5-latest-findings-on-uv-light-disinfection-in-hospitals.html

I have just one more wish, if a robot patient could be made to take MY place in the hospital I will be fully satisfied with the technology.

"... far-UVC light, a type of ultraviolet light that is harmless to humans, ..."

.

Patently untrue claims like the one above make any statement by the authors suspect.

UVC (even at the far end) is more energetic and more biologically damaging per incident photon than UVA and UVB.

Fewer skin cancer cases might be attributable to UVC, but that wouldn't he a testament to harmlessness. It is instead related to general lack of UVC at terrestrial levels due to UVC being high enough energy to interact readily with O2 and O3.

Common sense should suggest that if it is sufficiently energetic to alter nucleic acid enough to disable a virus that it also possesses enough energy to alter nucleic acid in true life enough to cause problems....and if it can't reach far enough to hurt human living cells, then many viri will also remain out of harms way.

I noticed when I was shopping around for LEDs that several of the higher K offerings were billed as "purification lights", but no explanation given for the name. Will have to read up on UV-C before I decide if the ability to scorch viral DNA can be harmless to human DNA.

Eukaryotic cells have two membranes to protect DNA; viruses may have a "capsule" and bacteria just one membrane. So it's not inconceivable that limited penetration would be fatal to microbes and safe for eukaryotes. But you'd want to be really certain about the dosage/light intensity/proximity to source or whatever factors could push it beyond the single membrane/capsid depth.

Of course ultraviolet light can fight the spread of influenza. UV light is a form of ionizing radiation. That's how it kills pathogens. Unfortunately it can also promote the rate of mutation in influenza. UV light is not a panacea for influenza, nothing is.

Unfortunately it can also promote the rate of mutation in influenza.

I agree, I touch off that on my post #17

"... UV light is a form of ionizing radiation. ..."

A portion (the most energetic/shortest wavelength) of the UV spectrum is ionizing, but most of it ia classified as nonionizing.

UVA is nonionizing

UVB is nonionizing

portion of UVC ~>225 nm is classified as nonionizing.

Only portion of UVC < 225 nm is classified as ionizing.

UVA and UVB can be harmful even without being ionizing. The ionizing portion of UVC is obviously not harmless.

Doesn't the issue depend on the intensity of the radiation? Amplitude and frequency/wavelength are two different things.

Photons are discrete packets of energy. The energy of a photon is inversely proportional to its wavelength, so proportional to its frequency.

Thinking about amplitude for individual photons is unlikely to result in useful intuitive understanding. These are, after all, things of the quantum mechanical realm.

For a light field, amplitude does relate to intensity in that the square of the amplitude of a light field is its intensity, but the properties of the individual photon are what determine how it interacts.

Perhaps over simplified a bit: frequency determines the damage done by individual photons and intensity describes the number of photons in a given time and area.

_{An idea} I've _{toyed with.}

UV emitting doorknobs and pulls that remain sterile.

Or, just copper plated?

reactive copper plate that will degrade into a poisonous green knob that must be acid washed until gone?

yes.. that's an option too.

I sense a high level of hostility in your response.

I withdraw my suggestion and encourage you to continue to pursue development of your invention.

Actually that is a very good suggestion. Great article here, also discusses why resistance doesn't occur to copper. Yes, they still have to clean the doorknobs periodically, I would hope so! But the hospital trials reported in this article are a better indicator of their value than anything performed in a lab.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3067274/

Also noted in the same article, "Deinococcus radiodurans is a bacterium that is exceptionally resistant to ionizing radiation because of its ability to repair even highly fragmented DNA. Remarkably, D. radiodurans was as sensitive as E. coli to contact killing by copper."

There may be a hot market for flu amulets too! Served up with handling and buffing instructions.

The problem with copper is that it doesn't kill the virus quickly enough at 45 min- 4 hrs, time required, many people can touch and spread whatever pathogen is present...no-touch door knobs are a better choice...

Wrong!

but ok.. and I apologize.. I was in a rush.

Obviously I was more interested in commenting on the Topic of UV and a passing thought I had. Nothing more.

maybe not so obvious is that I wouldn't give details of an active project to the public.

Obviously we've known about anti germ copper knobs An a LOT of other products forever. well.. a really long time.

based on that think if fair to say you're high level of OT response was hostile, but at an obliviously lower level than myself.

Thanks for the response is what I was going to say, but hurt, I didn't.

I'll give You a GA and an OT.

great.. I've reach my emoji limit and it's just Monday

_{I turned over rights to LynDoor^tm Industries anyhow}

When we had an orchard, we used Copper Sulfate as a fungicide.

Or Ag-plated? Ag has long been known to be an antimicrobial. When we still had silver coinage, I believe we had less disease transmission. Think about it .

Most hospitals don't have door knobs anymore...and the hardware is really expensive...

They just went through our building not too long ago and replaced all the door knobs with those lever things.....hate 'em...

This topic became important again
I think that even a high-quality UV lamp could not provide 100% cleaning. If you want more cleaning you definitely need complex cleaning and I used emop when I was in London. UV lamp is not a panacea.

"This topic became important again
I think that even a high-quality UV lamp could not provide 100% cleaning. If you want more cleaning you definitely need complex cleaning and I used emop when I was in London. UV lamp is not a panacea."
Yeah, agree about the UV statement